Chevy To Add New V8/RWD To Lineup

A NASCAR Sprint Cup car that will "closely resemble the production version,"... It will have 4 wheels/tires and a similar profile?

Ha ha ha. I hope it has real headlights, not headlight decals. Yes, I'm picking on NASCAR. I work with too many over-the-top NASCAR fanatics.

All new, a V8, and not a front drive. THAT is quite a switch. No mention of it being battery powered. I like it already. Go GM! Maybe they can make up for the total failure of the Volt.

You won't offend me. I'm not a fan a NASCAR, at all. In fact, I hate it.

How do you see the Volt as a failure? It's a historic techno wonder. .

Patrick

I don't remember the exact numbers, but GM sold about half as many as they thought they would. That is why GM halted production of the thing for 5 weeks.

Sources close to the United Auto Workers Union (UAW) also told TPM that the temporary production halt was ³totally normal,² as was the fact that GM would be temporarily laying off 1,300 workers during the shutdown, which will extend from March 19 to April 23.

Sounds totally normal to me.

BTW, didn't obama promise GM $20k or each Volt sold? Maybe it was only $10k. This was to get the price of the volt down to where someone might consider buying one.

That's great for us tax payers!

It's 40K car that needs a government subsidy that can't even get the fuel economy of an early 80s CRX.

Where are you getting that economy rating? That depends on how often you plug it in. Now I agree they should have used a small diesel in it, but it's the only inline hybrid so far.

e:

Wife wanted an Volt as she can get FREE Electricity at work! However once we found out it only seats 4, it was a deal killer...

ote:

You need more room than to seat 4? A big family you must have there. I think the average now is 1.8 kids, I think.

Patrick

---- Big snip. ----

The government didn't pay anyone a rebate just to get them to buy any of those items above. Volt buyers _DO_ get a $10k tax rebate simply for having bought the Volt.

I was pretty sure GM was compensated for building the thing, but I can't find any reference to it. I didn't look real hard though.

The only fault with the volt that I see is the fact that the government got involved in trying to make the general public think the volt is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Obviously, very few people want one.

True. But then none of those items cost nearly as much. Nor are they as important to our country/world.

I think it was the market. Toyota was having huge success with their Prius and GM, wisely enough, said we can do better.

The government didn't say it, the automotive press did. Read their reviews. The Volt is an amazing car -- well designed, well built, etc. It came to fruition by, and because of, the true believers inside GM -- the talented guys and girls who toil away everyday trying to bring world-class vehicles to market, the ones who have been able to bring GM back to respectability.

Patrick

In typical use it gets low 40s by all reports I've read.

Anyway they've pretty much reached the market limit for $40K ecomony cars.

GM can't sell them. No one wants one... Okay, hardly anyone wants one. It's a failure. There is no demand for them. It doesn't matter how amazing or well built the car is. There is no demand for it.

It doesn't matter if every GM employee is a true believer in the car. It doesn't matter how much anyone toils over building one. It doesn't matter if it's a world class car.

There is no demand. They can barely sell them. The volt is a failure. And that's too bad because the tax payers are getting screwed over this.

There is _NO_ tax rebate for buying a Ford Fusion Hybrid, which by the way starts at $28,775. AND, it gets 41 city/36 hwy/39 combined.

Oh yeah, the Fusion seats 5. I wouldn't buy either one (at this point in my life) but I'm leaning toward the Ford.

Again I think that's more to do with price than anything. You'd better check that again, there should be a tax credit for any hybrid.

The price is the problem but 40+MPG running on the generator sounds pretty good to me. If you plug it in everyday and rarely go past the mileage limit of the batteries you wouldn't be using any gas. Which brings up the next point, they should have used a Diesel instead of a gasoline engine. Which brings me to a further next point, I would have considered a Diesel Focus in a minute, but they refuse to sell them here. No one has a decent economy minded model. An Eco-boost Diesel Focus would have only slight competition.

I wonder if this is the same car that's been known about for a couple years as the Police Only replacement for the 9C1. Management may have decided that if they were going to run an assembly line might as well sell them to anyone.

The laziest bit of Googlin' tells me this:

Tax credits for hybrids, gas/electric, and plug-in electric cars is a global initiative, not just within the U.S.

Previously, hybrids qualified for tax credits. Problem is, as sales grew to a given point, those credits expired (Toyota and Honda have been discontinued, I believe - there is especially no longer an incentive to offer an incentive for buying a Prius)

There's a "2011 Alternative Motor Vehicle Credit for Electric Cars" with a credit of $7,500 for any of the qualifying vehicles. These include the plug-in Chevy Volt, and the CODA Sedan (?), the Nissan Leaf, the smart fortwo, the Tesla Roadster, and the Wheego LiFe (?). Again, once production of any vehicle reaches 200,000, these credits begin to go away.

From Ford, the Fusion and Escape Hybrids did, indeed, qualify for tax credits. Whether or not they still do, I don't know. But, as with all hybrid vehicles at least at one time, they most certainly did earn tax credits.

So it's not all just about Chevy, or just about the Volt. Governments around the world have been offering incentives to move customers from gas to electric, and the tax credit for a Chevy Volt is just one example.

dwight

Interesting. $7,500 for any of the qualifying vehicles. Yet you get $10k tax credit if you buy a volt. Got a link to that? I'm not into this enough to look it up right now.

Got a link to the $10K thing, 'cause I never saw that.

These tax credits are all laid out at the IRS website.

dwight

I'm just hoping to get something next year for the TDI purchase.

Oops, obama wants to raise it to 10k next year. I missed that. In Colorado you can get $13,500 in tax credit.

It's strange how these cars are so great that even when the government bribes you with a huge tax credit, no one wants the volt. People seem to want the prius. Not sure about the Fords.

Where do you think that tax rebate comes from? We the people, that's where. Tax payers. Mustang and camaro drivers. It comes from people that don't even own a car.

It's like a bad dream. Take my money Washington... Oh, they already did.